About NUseeds Funding

Amper, co-founded by three Northwestern students as undergraduates, helps factory managers improve their operations by providing real-time data on critical manufacturing metrics, which helps reduce lead times and waste. Amper is one of the most recent recipients of NUSeeds funding, and is currently operating out of Chicago.

NUseeds is Northwestern’s $4M pre-seed/seed investment fund. The funding comes from philanthropic donations to Northwestern, and is intended to accelerate the successful launch of innovations from Northwestern students and finance the most promising early-stage student ventures. We look for teams who have an outsized vision and would benefit materially from incremental financial support. NUseeds writes checks in the $10,000 – $100,000 range in exchange for equity.

Steve Szaronos and Rishi Prabhu founded Bespoke Post in 2011 after being accepted into the Entrepreneur’s Roundtable Accelerator program and seeing an opportunity in the e-commerce market for a subscription service for men. Since raising $25,000 in seed funding, Bespoke Post has grown to become the leading lifestyle subscription and e-commerce service for men, delivering monthly “boxes of awesome” filled with quality products, like home bar essentials and shaving sets, to more than 100,000 subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. They most recently raised $8 million in funding in a Series A, and have built out a team of more than 40 employees headquartered in New York City.

Sarah Adler and Mackenzie Barth (both listed in Forbes 2018 30 Under 30) were juniors at Northwestern when they decided to start their own website combining their passion for journalism and food. Spoon University, a website to share recipes, stories, trends, and other food-related content launched in 2012 and grew to a 100-person student team at Northwestern’s campus within a year. Now, Spoon University has expanded into 250 universities with over 7,000 contributors. In May 2016, Scripps Networks Interactive acquired the company at a valuation of $11 million.

Sonali Lamba and Nicole Staple met their first year at Kellogg in 2010, and incorporated Brideside in 2012 with a major launch in 2014. Brideside reinvented wedding retail by providing an all-channel concierge service experience that eases the bridal party planning process. Their dedicated style consultants work closely with brides and bridesmaids to curate their vision from a collection of affordable and on-trend bridesmaid dresses and gifts. Their showrooms, digital tools and try at home program make it easy for bridal parties to coordinate, no matter where they live. Realizing Chicago has the largest wedding market by spend, Brideside opened their first brick-and-mortar in the Fulton River District. Since 2015, the company has raised $6.5M in funding and has launched four additional showroom locations. Brideside’s newest flagship location will open in NYC in November 2018.

Sam Shank founded HotelTonight, the on-demand hotel booking app, in 2011, which now has more than 30 millions downloads. Operating exclusively through mobile bookings, HotelTonight is the leading mobile app for hotel bookings last minute and beyond, ensuring there’s always a quality hotel room at the lowest possible rate in 1,700 cities and nearly 40 countries.

Standing in line with her husband at Chipotle one day in 2011, Elise Wetzel surveyed the fresh ingredients on the menu and the customized approach to each meal. And then she asked herself: Why couldn’t that same approach work for pizza? Elise is the co-founder of Blaze Pizza, a nationwide fast-casual pizza restaurant that has grown in popularity. The Northwestern alumna founded the chain in 2011 with her husband, Rick Wetzel, who co-founded Wetzel’s Pretzels. In the five years since, the company has added more than 200 restaurants across North America, captured A-list investors such as LeBron James and Maria Shriver, and secured brand-building partnerships with Project(RED), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With annual sales now approaching $300 million, Wetzel believes Blaze will become a $1 billion brand by 2022.

In 2004, Maura and her husband, Mark, were bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and founded ZICO Beverages, one of the trailblazers of today’s $8B coconut water category. The Rampollas launched ZICO to combat obesity by encouraging consumers to drink a healthy, natural alternative to popular artificial, high-sugar beverages and to spur sustainable economic development in tropical nations across the world. ZICO experienced a decade of explosive growth and became one of the fastest growing beverage brands in the world before being acquired by The Coca-Cola Company in 2013. Rampolla’s roles at ZICO spanned strategy, branding, marketing, product development and employee health and wellness.

Prior to ZICO, Maura lived in El Salvador for five years where she gave birth to and raised her daughters while consulting for a variety of small and large non-profits. She wrote grants, evaluated programs and consulted on rural health and early education for CARE El Salvador, DEVTECH Systems, and Health Unlimited UK. During the late 1990s, Rampolla championed women and children’s health at Planned Parenthood and LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, TN.

Today, Maura Rampolla is Principal of Rampolla Ventures. Rampolla Ventures invests in and advises companies with social missions. She is also co-founder and director of The Mark and Maura Rampolla Foundation established in 2012. The Foundation’s focus is on health and social entrepreneurship benefiting low income and vulnerable populations. She also sits on advisory boards of USC’s Brittingham Social Entrepreneurship Lab (part of the Marshall School of Business) and UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health.

Match.com launched in 1995 and revolutionized online dating. A pioneer in the industry, Match.com “matches” or pairs singles in hopes of finding a successful romantic relationship. Gary Kremen founded the company and was President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Electric Classified, Inc., the parent company of Match.com from 1993 until March 1996, until it was acquired by CUC International Inc. Gary is also the founder of Clean Power Finance, building the future of solar through an online B2B marketplace.

When Chuck Templeton’s in-laws were coming into town and his wife spent hours calling restaurants to find a reservation, something clicked. Templeton realized that not only was this a problem his wife was having, but a problem that people worldwide must have, too. He founded OpenTable in 1998, an online restaurant reservation service allowing restaurant goers to select a time, location, and the amount of people dining and and find restaurants with availability. They also provided an electronic reservation book that helped the restaurants with their table management, guest management and reservation management. Templeton stepped down from OpenTable in 2002, but remained on the board until 2006. The company went public on the NASDAQ in 2009 and was acquired by The Priceline Group in 2014.

Andy Dunn is the founder and CEO of Bonobos, Inc., the company behind e-commerce-driven apparel brands Bonobos and AYR. Founded in 2007 with namesake menswear brand, Bonobos, Dunn has worked to define a new model for vertically integrated fashion retail in the ecommerce era, providing a bundle of high quality, great-fitting clothes and a hassle-free shopping experience across brands. He was named to Crain’s “40 under 40” list in 2013 and was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s “Rising Retail Stars” in 2012. Additionally, he founded Red Swan Ventures, an angel investment firm focused on building great consumer Internet companies, is on the board of personal dating website, Hinge, and is founding board chair emeritus of education social enterprise Blue Engine. Dunn graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2007 and from Northwestern University in 2000.